Avocados

I love avocados. I think I could enjoy them every day, and not get bored.  Not just because they are tasty – because ohmygoodness, are they ever – but because life, it seems, is much like an avocado.  So tastes good, and makes you think.

Hear me out on this.

The avocado principle:

1. If you wait until you really want an avocado, the market won’t have any ripe ones. You need to buy them in advance.  You need to plan ahead and get things ready before you actually need them. 

   
   

2. If you eat an avocado that is not quite ripe, you won’t enjoy it. AND, you won’t have a chance to enjoy it tomorrow, when it would have been perfect if you had only waited.  Avocados are their own time-keeper.  Not one thing you try will push them at a faster pace, no matter what you see online.

   
   

3. If you live your life based on instant gratification and little planning, you will either never have a good avocado or you will pay more than you should to someone else who planned ahead.  Be the ant, friends.  Be the ant.

   
   

4. Buy more avocados than you think you need, because the hassles are always greater than the cost, so you might as well invest.  And just because an avocado looks pretty (and ripe!) from the outside does not guarantee that the inside will match. 

   
   

5. When you plan ahead and buy more than you think you need, you may end up with  so many, maybe even more than you can enjoy, so share them when they are ripe. What goes around comes around.

All of these truths lead to the real insight, the metaphor that is just waiting to be lived in all ways: If you get ahead of the cycle, waiting until the first one is ripe and then always replenishing before you need one, you can live an entire life eating ripe avocados. On the other hand, if impatience and poor planning gets you behind the cycle, you will be just as likely to waste every one you, and they most likely will not be good enough to eat.

One last thought: Plan plan plan. Plant your tree before you need the shade.  Especially with avocado trees, you will have to wait at least 7 years before you get some sort of (fruit) pay-off for your labor.

Now. Who wants some guacamole?